A Flower Farmer’s Delight

Happy Belated Valentine’s Day people.

Whoever created Valentine’s must be a flower farmer. It’s that time of the year for them to make a fortune. “It’s Valentine’s or never!” I don’t know how flower farmers survive. Sure, I see people buying flowers, but 1 bouquet for the home ain’t gonna make a difference, does it? Maybe, it’s the hotels. Or the restaurants? Oh yeah, there’re birthdays, funerals, weddings, people falling sick… Anyway, that’s not my business. I’m just here to show you our trip to a flower farm. Anu loves flowers. So, when she spots a place with flowers on TikTok or Facebook, …here we come, flower garden!


This is the Cameron Highlands Flora Park, or in Malay, Taman Bunga (meaning plain ol’ Flower Garden), in Kea Farm, Cameron Highlands, Pahang, Malaysia


The missus spotted this place on TikTok (or was it Facebook?) while we were in Malaysia, and off we went on a road trip to Cameron Highlands from Ipoh


Fancy a ride on a farm pickup truck? Due to the narrow and steep access into the farm, visitors had to park at a car park near the main road and hop onto pickups arranged by the park. That pickup in the photo above, was our transport, believe it or not? …Is this even legal??

Here’re the rest of the photos. Enjoy!












Flora Park, Cameron Highlands, Malaysia


Don’t you just love hate the plastic sheets they use for farm shelters??? (Top of the photo above). I call it the blight of Cameron Highlands. They’re all over the place! You can see green hills interspersed with rows and rows of ugly plastic sheeted shelters. Yecch!


How's the view, boys? Kea Farm, Cameron Highlands, Jul 2022


Time to go. Bye-bye Cameron Highlands!


Some of the apartment buildings (or is it a hotel?) in Kea Farm, Cameron Highlands

Remembering My Hometown

Ipoh, Perak, Malaysia – Jul 2022

It’s Chinese New Year! The biggest festival of my childhood years. How I remember those times, when the whole of my father’s side of the family would converge in our house in Ipoh for CNY (because my granny and grandpa were staying with us, hehe).

There’d be all the silly games we kids played (I have lots of cousins, growing up. My father has 5 siblings, and then there’s mom’s side, and my parents’ cousins’ families), firecrackers, card games, etc. We could eat till we gag. We could break ‘curfew’ and stay up late. Gamble a little, and drink a little (when we were older). And we could get loads of ANGPOWs! $$$ Ka-ching! We’d be festive for at least 2 weeks (CNY is 15 days, OK?) and our biggest day isn’t actually the first day of New Year but the 8th and 9th day, being Hokkiens. Those were the days.

Sadly, the Ipoh house is an empty house now, and not many of the family still reside in Ipoh. Many of the old folks have left us and gone to the world beyond. My siblings and cousins have all gone their separate ways to make a living elsewhere and start families. They’re all over the world now. But Ipoh still brings back loads of memories.

Here’re some photos of Ipoh from our last visit in Aug 2022. Happy New Year! Gong Xi Fa Cai! Koung Hey Fat Choi! Kiong Hi Huat Cai! Etc, etc, etc.

We decided to climb (walk up, to be more precise) a hill near Ipoh, from my childhood years – Kledang Hill, in Menglembu. The last I remembered climbing this hill was with my mom when I was a kid. That may be 40 years ago, because my mom passed away in 1985. To climb the hill, we’d wake up in the wee hours of the morning and get there before sun breaks. We’d walk as much as we could, then head down to Menglembu town to get an early breakfast at 7+am! if I remember correctly. We’d do this to avoid the relentless midday sun. Malaysia has a hot and humid climate after all, being a tropical rainforest.


Canning Garden, our suburb – That hill in the background, is Kledang Hill


We’re there! A view of Ipoh City from Kledang Hill. We got there before sun break! It’s full of clouds. It may rain at any time


It’s raining. We forgot to bring umbrellas. Anu’s smart. She brought a rain coat. “There! That’s the summit. Let’s go on”


The road at Bukit Kledang


We’re drenched. I think we’d stop here. We don’t know how much more there is to go, to the summit. Can’t check maps because there’s no coverage and it’s bloody raining… (Later on, I checked and found out that we were only about 1.4km short of the summit. We could’ve got there in 30 mins!)


Let’s head down. Whew, the rain’s stopped. Anu at a mini waterfall






Someone’s made a garden here! Fancy that


Monkeys out to play, at the car park


Back in Canning Garden. This is our neighbour, Auntie Nancy’s house. She loves leaves, as you can see


More of Auntie Nancy’s garden. We have the same swing in our house, next door. I think it comes with the house as all of our neighbours have the same swing. And that big urn which Jayden is looking at, we used to have one in the Ipoh house’s bathroom that I took a bath from when I was a kid. We took baths with a mug. It’s nice!

One sad news from our neighbourhood recently – our other next-door neighbour, Mr Leong, passed away last month. He had been sick for some time. The Leongs were teachers in my school, the Ipoh Anglo-Chinese School. Mr Leong was once the head-master. Mrs Leong lives alone now in the house. But one of their children lives in Ipoh and visits regularly. God bless them.

Anyway, Happy New Year! May your Dragon Year be filled with success, joy, good health and prosperity!

The Road to Hell

You’ve seen the Road to Paradise (my last post). Here’s the Road to Hell, for contrast.


The road across the Karakum Desert, Turkmenistan

This post is about a trip we took recently (Dec 2023), across the Karakum Desert of Turkmenistan in Central Asia, from Turkmenistan’s northern border with Uzbekistan to the Darvaza Gas Crater (aka the Gates of Hell) in the centre of Turkmenistan. The Darvaza Gas Crater (also spelt Derweze) is a continuously burning gas crater. I’ll let the photos speak.

We started our journey at Dashoguz city, near the border of Uzbekistan.


Dashoguz (also spelt Daşoguz) capital of a region with its namesake, i.e. Dashoguz Region of Turkmenistan

Turkmenistan is a strange country. People call it the North Korea of Central Asia, (I heard this from a Turkmen himself, in Dubai, and he’s not wrong). No one can enter Turkmenistan without a visa, and you can only get that with a Letter of Invitation issued by the Turkmen government*. The easiest (and I suspect, the only) way to get that is thru an authorised Turkmen travel agency (like Owadan Tourism, which we used). Media in the country is strictly controlled. And no, there is no social media!!! No WhatsApp, no WeChat, no Telegram, no Facebook, nothing, (except IMO, …shhhh), at the time of our visit. And if you think you wanna bypass that with a VPN, hard luck! Turkmenistan is well-known for shutting down VPN’s the moment they find out about them, like swatting flies in a clean room. Hell, Turkmenistan has one of the worst internets in the world! (Just Google ‘worst internet in the world’ and you’ll see Turkmenistan hovering at the top, or at the bottom depending on how they’re sorted). Of the 2 days that we were there, we had no internet or Wi-Fi connection whatsoever. (But our Uzbek SIM card works at some areas near the Uzbek border, hehe). The country’s leaders have their own eccentricities, especially its first president after independence, like renaming the names of the months and days to names associated with the leader’s family or things of interest, and requiring all and sundry to read and memorize his book, to pass school and university exams. Stuff like that, OK? Interesting, isn’t it? Anyway, this is not a post about the quirkiness of Turkmenistan. Go Google Saparmurat Niyazov if you wanna find out more.

* Some people claimed that you can get a transit visa, if you are entering and exiting Turkmenistan from one country to another country. No, I didn’t try that. Enter from Uzbekistan and exit to where? Afghanistan? Iran?

Anyway, after crossing the Uzbek border at Shavat into Turkmenistan, and spending an hour and more in Turkmenistan Immigration with our travel agency’s representative, we got our visa! Yippee! A visa costs a whopping 110 USD for adults, and USD 85 (or was it 90) for kids. (And they will accept ONLY US Dollars). (What? The costs include a mandatory test for COVID-19, OK?) Yeah, COVID tests are still around in DECEMBER 2023! Maybe, that’s why Turkmenistan is the only country in the world (excluding some small Pacific island nations) that officially had no confirmed cases of COVID-19 during the pandemic! Unbelievable, isn’t it? Well, that’s Turkmenistan for you!

Anyway, first stop, lunch, because after that, there’d be a 5-hour journey across the Karakum Desert to the Darvaza Gas Crater aka The Gates of Hell, and we wanna get there before sunset.


Lunch at Baytown Restaurant, Dashoguz with the very helpful Ms Aygul from Owadan Tourism

One tip for money in Turkmenistan. Don’t bother trying to get Manats (the local currency) from outside (except maybe from the Uzbek border crossing at Shavat). They’re not available as they aren’t convertible. And the official rate is a sham. Officially, it’s 1 USD to 3.50 Manats, but the going rate inside Turkmenistan is actually 1 USD to 15 Manats. Change it in the country. Ask your travel agent if you really need some.


Off we go. A wave off from the President of Turkmenistan, His Excellency Mr Serdar Berdimuhamedow. Good day sir! You have a nice and ‘interesting’ country


Leaving Dashoguz and civilization. Clear road ahead… (there’re not many cars on the road even though this is the main road that connects Dashoguz to Turkmenistan’s capital, Ashgabat. Is there a catch?)


A stop before we head into the Karakum Desert. Toilet here, anyone? Or bush toilet further onwards! (Bush toilet ain’t such a bad idea after looking at the conditions of the toilets, ahem)


Fancy a pishme?


Welcome to the Karakum Desert. Karakum means ‘black sand’. This desert is a cold desert (and believe me, it was freezing when we were there), that takes up 70% of Turkmenistan’s land area! The road, as you can see, is full of cracks and potholes, to add some excitement and body massage to your journey. (Maybe that’s why there’s not much traffic…)


Baa baa black goats, have you any wool? I wonder where the shepherds are. I’ve not seen a single human (except for drivers and a few policemen) or settlement (except 2 tea shops) in the whole 3-hour journey across the Karakum!


A woolly one-humped camel in the desert (and I thought only 2-humped Bactrian camels had wool)


Getting off the main road to get to the Gates of Hell


Finally, the Darvaza Gas Crater, nicknamed the Door to Hell or the Gates of Hell! It is a gas crater that has been continuously burning since 1971, when some Soviet engineers decided to set fire to the crater to prevent the possible emission of poisonous gases from the crater. It has been burning ever since…


The freezing Karakum Desert from the top of a hillock near the gas crater


Cool crater, looks just nice for burning rubbish, from the top of this hill. If only it could heat up this hill, brrrrrrr… (I’ll leave more photos of this interesting hole for another post)

That’s all for now.

The Road to Paradise

The Road to Paradise, Glenorchy, New Zealand

Here’s a quick holiday picture post to keep the blog going. I’ve meant to write this post a year ago, when my dad and Auckland sis’s family finally visited Queenstown in the South Island of New Zealand last January. They went looking for scenes of Middle Earth (from the Lord of the Rings movie which was filmed in NZ), as well as the well-known attractions around. Here is our own journey to this part of ‘Middle Earth’ in December 2018.

I had no idea where the Lord of the Ring's Isengard or Lothlorien's location was. It wasn’t marked on Google Maps at that time (I think), or I just hadn’t researched enough, before flying over to Queenstown and renting a campervan. I just knew that some of the LOTR scenes were shot in the Glenorchy area at the northern end of Lake Wakatipu where Queenstown was. I noticed a place named Paradise to the north of Glenorchy. That’s it! What better place to go, than Paradise??? The scenery there must be beautiful, judging from the name. (I bet you, the first residents to Greenland were conned just like that). We were also incidentally looking for a camping spot for our campervan, and Glenorchy has one (didn’t fancy staying inside Queenstown. …What? Hire a campervan, and stay inside a town? What the heck?!?)

This post is actually a continuation of our 2018 campervan adventure in NZ's South Island. We had visited Milford Sound and the Fiordland National Park, and had put up a night at Mossburn on our return trip to Queenstown. (Click on the links, if you wanna see what we were up). Here’re the pictures of our journey from Mossburn back to Queenstown and onwards. Paradise, here we come!


We’re back on the shores of Lake Wakatipu! Ahead is the Devil’s Staircase Lookout Point. (Don’t ask me why it’s called the Devil’s Staircase, I didn’t see any signs of any staircases. Maybe it refers to the road)


The Devil’s Staircase (that’s what it says on Google Maps), Lake Wakatipu, Queenstown, NZ


The shores of Lake Wakatipu! Is this Isengard? Beats me. I don’t think so. Isengard is a friggin tower on a flat land, surrounded by mountains, not in a lake. (And I bet you, it’s a CGI tower). But what the heck, the views here are fantastic, better than any Isen-friggin-gard


Lake Wakatipu, on the Queenstown-Glenorchy Road, just north of Creighton (thanks Google Maps)


Approaching Glenorchy, just next to Glenorchy’s Airport. (What? Glenorchy has an airport??? That’s what is sez on Google Maps. I think it’s a small one, probably for crop dusters and small planes…)


Shite, the road to Paradise sure is bumpy. It ain’t a tarred road. Let’s go a few more kilometres on this and if we don’t see anything, we’d turn back, OK? Don’t wanna shake all the nuts and bolts out of the rented campervan! The photo showed the limit of where we went, before we turned back towards Glenorchy. It’s near Earnslaw village on the Glenorchy-Paradise Road. Studying Google Maps now, showed that the mountain in the photo above, is Mount Earnslaw, and those forests at the foot was where Lothlorien was filmed. Heck, they have the location marked on Google Maps now. I’m sure it wasn’t there in 2018. A few more kilometres, and we would have been in Lothlorien and after that, Paradise. But what the heck, it’ll just be a forest, wouldn’t it? Besides, we had to get back to town to look for a camping spot


Glenorchy! Mrs Wooley’s General Store


Mrs Wooley’s Campground. Heck, the campground’s full! (The problem with travelling in December in NZ, is that it’s peak season and everything is either full, or amazingly overpriced, especially if you’ve not booked in advance). It was a near last-minute trip for us, because we weren’t sure that we could get an NZ visa for Anu in the first place. (Yup, it was my fault 😔.) The visa came on the very day of our flight from Dubai to Auckland!! Thank God!


Leaving Glenorchy, and heading back to Queenstown. The location of this photo is near a place marked on Google Maps as 'Little Middle Earth', a landscape designer office…


No luck in Queenstown, let’s head to Arrowtown. There’s a campground there too, but the app (or was it a website) that we used to check camping grounds (maybe CamperMate? or Rankers? I forgot) says that’s full. No harm driving there and checking it out. Shite, full as well. They said we could freedom camp on the Crown Range Summit. (Freedom camping is when you camp on public land that isn’t a recognised camping ground or holiday park). We had no choice, let’s do that. The view in the photo above is from the Arrow Junction Lookout Point on our way to the Crown Range Summit


Whew, made it! Crown Range Summit car park, our camping spot for the night. Brrr, it’s cold and windy (it’s a summit, what d’ya expect? ...But it's Summer!)


Time to try out the campervan’s cooking equipment! And the portable toilet. Etc, etc, etc. We’ve so far been spending nights in paid campgrounds or holiday parks which are equipped with shared kitchens, bathrooms and laundrettes. So, we haven’t really got a chance to try out all the things in the campervan. Hey, it has a fridge, wash basin, stove, etc, everything we need (except a shower). Cool! “But kids, don’t waste water, OK?” “Gotta fill it up with fresh water the next time we get to a filling station, and gotta empty the waste tanks” (All the paid campgrounds have this I think, or you could go to a dump station, which is a place where you throw your waste water away). In campervan terminology, waste water is called grey water. And sewage is black water! And no, you can’t throw this anywhere you like. Only in approved dump stations! Or you’d get a big fine and banned from camping for eternity (I made that up. I don’t actually know)


We survived the night!! View from the Crown Range Summit car park, of Lake Wakatipu and Queenstown below


Bye-bye “Weathertop Hill”. Weathertop is a hill in the Lord of the Rings story and movie, but the Crown Range Summit isn't the location where they filmed it. The name just got stuck in my head because of the blustery weather at that place. See ya in Wanaka (where we were headed to next)!